The next thing she knew, she was being hauled through the back of the flyer and right into the side of one of the giant trees. Bubbles trailed out of her nostrils as her mouth filled up with water until the grip on her arm lifted her above the flood.
“Grab the bark!”
Norah heard him but she couldn’t stop hacking up the liquid in her throat. Her breath was lost somewhere amongst the sputter, but her hand found the rough edges of jagged bark and held on.
“Don’t let go. For anything,” Stryker shouted over the rain just before he let her go.
The sound of gunshots filled her ears as she coughed and vomited up water. She blinked the last drops from her eyes. Norah looked down to find broken metal and plumes of blood, all rising up from below in billowing red clouds.
She shrieked as it surrounded her body. The heel of her boot dug into the wet base of the tree and she lifted herself up but her eyes remained glued to the currents and the pit of monstrous snakes thrashing just below the swirling water. One of the tails glinted like quicksilver.
She held her breath.
And then the violence ended.
“Stryker?” she cried again but he didn’t reappear.
Norah squinted as the dead coilers rose up only to drift away on the currents created by the flood. Their corpses tangled against a large bush only to be sucked back below by other predators.
Bubbles continued to churn up from the water as the last remaining air escaped the terra cruiser. Then she heard the one thing she had hoped to never hear again.
The distant shrieks of approaching ghouls.
“Oh, what the fuck,” Norah muttered.What the fuck.She continued to swipe the rain out of her eyes and sputter.Maybe I wasn’t meant to survive.
Fuck that.
She eyed a nearby tree, one with branches hanging low enough to grab onto and, without a second thought, propelled herself away from the trunk she held. She waded forward and tried to ignore the creatures that nipped and swam around her feet.
She treaded perpendicular to the current and kept her head above water as much as she could. She caught the next tree with the tips of her fingers.
It was enough, her nails ripped across the soggy wood until she found enough purchase to bring her legs up and out of the water. She hugged the wood. Her clothes tore as she hooked one leg around the branch and hauled half her body out of the flood.
The sharp peel of the branch dug into her skin. Norah lifted the rest of the way out of the water and took in her surroundings.
She couldn’t see the shriekers; she couldn’t see much at all past the dense foliage and rain. She counted their wails like the pauses between oncoming thunder in her head.
We drove south, no more than thirty minutes.
That put them, possibly, halfway to the landing site and to a ship that may or may not be there.
Her eyes dropped back down to the water below her, clouded by constant movement and the soil of the jungle. Things moved within, bugs, amphibious creatures, and plant-life destroyed beyond repair.
Lightning cracked, flooding her shaded spot with a burst of light. Thousands of critters appeared in the flash, either basking in the monsoon or trying to find ways out of the water.
There were more than coiler corpses–there were the drowned bodies of animals all around her.
Stryker wasn’t among them.
Norah counted four more shrieks, eight more lightning strikes, and the numerous cracks of wood snapping and animals feasting and dying around her. She counted the ways she could die: drowning, animal attack, starvation (now that she no longer had her pack), sickness, bug bites, lightning strike...
She stopped when she realized that there were no easy solutions to any of her problems. Minutes passed as she caught her breath and eyed the tree above her, determining the safest ascent into the pods at the top.
Or the safest way to continue south.
She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and squeezed her empty pistol clip. She steeled her nerve.I have to keep moving.
Norah clenched her fists and lifted herself up only to stop and let loose the remaining air in her body. A head appeared from the currents, breaking the path of floating leaves and twigs. It rose up slowly, short hair pasted against it until dark eyes that gleamed with a twinkle of blue appeared, narrowed and observant.
